Browse by Theme: Value Chains

Football teams are a system and markets are systems too... I am a market systems practitioner who lives and works in Brazil. After the emotions from Brazil’s semi-final failure calmed down, I started to draw a few analogies from the World Cup. Painful as it was (for me at least), Brazil’s epic 7-1 defeat might teach us a few things about how to make market facilitation initiatives more successful and resilient.

The close of 2013 brings with it the inevitable series of lists of the best and worst of the year. It's good to reflect on deeds past, but this list takes a different approach: it describes what these lists should say a year from now.

CARE International's request to business in this year's Living Wage Week is simple. Implement living wages, and do it having ensured that you understand the key role of women in your supply chain, so that the women working at the end of the supply chain, as well as having a decent wage, will also have some equality with their male counterparts.

There’s an inescapable buzz around the role of business in international development. Everywhere I go—from Bangladesh to East Africa, from the flurry of activity of the UNGA or CGI in New York to the WEF Annual meeting in Davos—it’s a topic that has risen to the very top of the development agenda.

To be clear, CARE welcomes this long-awaited energy and momentum. But business still has a long way to go, particularly when it comes to understanding the importance and specific needs of women—both as customers and as critical participants in supply chains.

As NGOs gathered in London last week to begin discussing ‘Make Poverty History Mark 2’, an Indian colleague neatly summed up what he felt CARE needs to focus on if we are to make significantly more progress towards poverty eradication.

Address unequal global power structures

Improve governance in developing countries

Secure better market access for poor people

A healthy potential recipe for a post 2015 MDG framework if ever I heard one.

CARE works around the world to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. We put women and girls in the centre because we know that we cannot overcome poverty until all people have equal rights and opportunities.